From COVID to Power Outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has Created a Failed State

The Republican Party has had a lock on Texas politics for over two decades, and has reduced it to a failed state. Even Texans like Beto O’Rourke are making this observation. Millions are without electricity in the midst of one of the state’s worse winter storms ever. This massive failure of infrastructure comes on the heels of the state government’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in which governor Greg Abbot initially forbade mayors of major cities from ordering economic lock downs, and actively discouraged mask-wearing, policies that he then had to reverse.

The Republican Party does not believe in government. Perhaps that is one reason its leader recently tried to kill the government on Capitol Hill. The GOP is about coddling the very rich. The poor babies don’t like being regulated, being made to spend money on the welfare of the people, or being taxed. Who will will take these burdens off the snowflake business classes? Never fear, the GOP is here.

The Republican Party is the victim of magical thinking that the market can solve all problems if only it is unleashed and freed of the shackles of government.

These precepts are ugly, producing an ever ratcheting economic inequality in which much of the country’s wealth is in the talons of a handful of billionaires while millions live in poverty and food insecurity and even many workers are part of the growing class of working poor. Class and race overlap– keeping the billionaires happy at the expense of the rest of us mostly means keeping elderly privileged whites happy. Look at the Forbes 500 some time.

These precepts are also grounded in falsehoods. No, most poor people aren’t poor because they are lazy. No, most millionaires aren’t self-made. And most of all, there are lots of problems that the market does not solve very well, where it would be good to have the government take the situation in hand.